October 2023 – Baseball, Bleeding, Books, and Bikes

Watching

Baseball playoffs: I watched an absolute ton of baseball this month. It always bothers me that the teams that do best over the course of 162 games often get washed out by lesser teams that get hot just at the right time. I shouldn’t complain. Neither the 2004 Red Sox nor the 2019 Nationals won their divisions.

Ahsoka: We finished watching this Star Wars mini-series. Except for when Ray Stevenson was on screen, it was boring. Sadly, Stevenson died earlier this year and, thus, won’t be back to reprise his role.

Lupin: The third installment of the tales of Arsanne Diop, the gentleman bandit, who uses Arsene Lupin, the hero of a century old series of novels, as his inspiration to steal and thwart bad guys. Well worth watching.

Bleeding

Donating: I made a double red blood donation early in the month. Instead of just taking a unit of whole blood, my blood was transferred to a machine that separated out two units of hemoglobin. It wasn’t painful, but I was a bit off my game for about ten days afterward.

Destroying: I managed not to lose any blood after using a line trimmer to golf an acorn into a storm door, breaking the tempered glass into thousands of pieces. It took the better part of two hours to clean up the tiny pieces that fell all over our front steps. We couldn’t find any paper work indicating when or where we bought the door. A sticker on the door had the name of a distributor as well as some other information including a date from September 2014. I took a photo and sent it to the distributor’s representative. He figured out who the manufacturer was and the manufacturer is sending a replacement under warranty.

Reading

The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman. This is the fourth installment of the Thursday Murder Club mystery series. Four pensioners solve the case of the murder of their friendly neighborhood antiques dealer. Heroin, antiquities, and a host of baddies make for a very entertaining read.

An Immense World by Ed Yong. This is an intense and remarkably entertaining exploration of animals’ perceptual environment. Yong takes us into how animals experience the world, how they eat, see, hear, smell, and otherwise detect their environs. Nearly every page is mind blowing. (Did you know that dogs noses detect odors when they exhale? Or that barn owls big round eyes act as receiving dishes that channel sounds to their ears which are situated under feathers next to their eyes?) Our human sensory abilities bias us in how we understand and treat or mistreat other creatures.

DIYing

My wife did a big solo road trip from DC to Hartford to Chicago and back, While she was gone, I repaired two prominent cracks in drywall that have been taunting me every time I climbed the stairs. It took several days to complete and made a big mess each time. I ended up having to paint an hallway to avoid having two-tone walls. So far my wife hasn’t noticed I did anything which is only fair since I didn’t notice the painting she did while I was away on my tour this summer.

Riding

It has been a while since I reached a milestone, but this month’s was a whopper. Big Nellie, my 2002 Tour Easy recumbent, cracked the 50,000 mile mark.

I rode the Great Pumpkin Ride in the Virginia Piedmont for the umpteenth time. Like last year, I rode alone this year but with a twist: I brought snacks. This way I could avoid the crowded pit stops and just boogie. The foliage was at its peak, the best I’ve seen in my many years of riding this event. The weather was more like early September than late October. And The Mule rolled like a champ.

I managed to ride 906 miles for the month, ending at 9,980.5 miles for the year. But for a 3 1/2 mile ride to and from the car mechanic, I decided to take the last day of the month off so 10,000 will have to wait a day. The Nellies did the majority of the miles this month. Big Nellie, my Tour Easy recumbent, logged 417.5 miles. Little Nellie, my re-designed Bike Friday New World Tourist, rolled 357.5 miles. The rest was on The Mule. The Tank, my new name for my Surly Cross Check, sat idle.

I started doing the Stu McGill Big 3 core exercises, which help stabilize the lower back. I don’t know if they help my stenosis all that much but my balance is much better. Also, I couldn’t execute a squat before doing the Big 3; now it’s no problem.